"What! isn't there some little corner no bigger than your hand, where I could hide? I am so small! Look, Michel, I could get into your cupboard. Anyway, you could take me to the door without taking me in, and father would not be angry to know that I was there with you." Michel preached a beautiful sermon to Mila on the subject of childish curiosity, and the violent instinctive longing which she felt to intoxicate herself with the spectacle of patrician grandeur. He forgot that he was consumed by the same longing, and that he was anxious to be alone so that he might give way to it. Mila listened to reason when Michel told her that he was going to assist his father to overlook the decorations of the ball; but she heaved a deep sigh, none the less. "Well," she said, tearing herself away from the window, "it's no use to think any more about it. However, it's my own fault; for if I had had any idea that I should be so wild to go, I could very easily have asked the princess to invite me." "Now you are going mad again, just as I thought you were becoming reasonable, Mila! As if the princess could have invited you, even if she had taken it into her head to do it!" "Why, of course she could; isn't she the mistress of her own house?" "Even so! what would all those ancient dowagers, all those august blockheads say, if they should see little Mila, with her velvet jacket and striped skirt, dancing about among their noble dolls of daughters?" "Let me tell you, that I might perhaps cut a better figure than all of them, young and old!" "That is no reason." "I know that; but the princess is a queen in her house, and I will bet that she will invite me to the first ball she chooses to give." "You will ask her to, I suppose?" "To be sure! I know her, and she is very fond of me; she is a friend of mine." As she said this, Mila drew herself up and assumed an air of importance, so comical and so fascinating that Michel laughed and kissed her. "I like to see, Mila," he said, "that you have no suspicion of anything. And why should I deceive you? You will lose soon enough the trustful illusions of your age of gold! But, since you know this beautiful princess so well, pray tell me something about her, my dear little sister; tell me how it happens that you are so intimately acquainted with her, without my knowing anything about it?" "Aha! Michel, you are curious to know that, now! But since you have shown so little eagerness to question me, you will kindly wait a little longer, until it pleases me to answer you." "So it's a secret, is it?" "Perhaps! what do you care?" "I care very little, in truth, to know anything whatsoever concerning this princess. She has a fine palace, I work there, she pays me, and I care little about anything else for the moment. But nothing that interests my little Mila can be indifferent to me, nor should it be hidden from me, in my opinion."